At first, I though these sound bites were completely random. Then I began to notice a pattern. Soon, I realized that I was hearing peoples commands given to their mobile devices. Guys, I’m telling you, if you’ve said it to your phone, it’s been recorded…and there’s a damn good chance a 3rd party is going to hear it.

Fantastic 1997-era book of interviews with the programmers behind some of the greatest games in retrogaming history:

Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers was released as a commercial product in March 1997. At the time it was one of the first retrogaming projects to focus on lost history rather than game collecting, and certainly the first entirely devoted to the game authors themselves. Now a good number of the interviewees have their own web sites, but none of them did when I started contacting them in 1995. […] If you have any of the giddy anticipation that I did whenever I picked up a magazine containing an interview with Mark Turmell or Dan [M.U.L.E.] Bunten, then you want to start reading.

Jason Roe is organising a Table Quiz in Dublin on March 26th to support fundraising efforts by Digital Rights Ireland. We will supply tables, questions and a ready supply of beer and maybe finger food.

“I’ve been around and interviewed quite a lot of self-identified transhumanists in the last couple of years, and I’ve noticed many of them express a fairly stark ideology that is at best libertarian, and at worst Randian. Very much “I want super bionic limbs and screw the rest of the world”. They tend to brush aside the ethical, environmental, social and political ramifications of human augmentation so long as they get to have their toys. There’s also a common expression that if sections of society are harmed by transhumanist progress, then it is unfortunate but necessary for the greater good (the greater good often being bestowed primarily upon those endorsing the transhumanism). That attitude isn’t prevalent on this forum at all – I think the site tends to attract more practical body-modders than theoretical transhumanists – but I wondered if anyone else here had experienced the same attitudes in their own circles? What do you make of it?”